Huge discrimination against women in the Arab world is holding back overall economic prosperity and social development in the region, a United Nations report said on Wednesday. “An Arab renaissance cannot be accomplished without the rise of women in Arab countries,” the “Arab Human Development Report 2006” said. “Directly and indirectly, it concerns the well-being of the entire Arab world.”
The UN Development Programme’s report, which was compiled by Arab experts and academics, said countries in the region must give women more access to the “tools” of development, such as education and health care, and consider positive discrimination.
In many nations, women’s exclusion is enshrined in laws that specifically restrict their activities, even though the constitutions of most Arab states would provide a basis to eliminate bias, according to the report. “The business of writing the law, applying the law and interpreting the law is governed above all by a male-oriented culture,” the report entitled “Towards the rise of women in the Arab world” said.
That does seem to be what their holy book had in mind.
“A complex web of cultural, social, economic and political factors, some ambiguous in nature, keeps Arab women in thrall,” the report said, pointing to “cultural hangovers” and the way societies are structured to deal with education and the family.